Have you heard of Percy Harrison Fawcett?
He was a British geographer, artillery officer, cartographer, archaeologist, and explorer,
who dedicated his life to exploring South America and finding a lost city in the Amazon.
He spent years to find this ancient city, in the jungles of Brazil.
Fawcett disappeared in 1925, along with his eldest son, Jack, and one of Jack's
friends, Raleigh during an expedition to find Z, his name for an ancient lost city.
While it never came to be known if Fawcett ever found what he was looking for,
scientists have recently discovered pyramids and canals beneath the forests of the Bolivian Amazon.
And not just that, they have discovered something more.
Welcome to Lab 3 60, its time to explore.
When people cleared the forest for agriculture,
they revealed the existence of a sophisticated pre-Columbian monument building society, which
constructed Earthworks of precise geometric plan connected by straight, orthogonal roads.
The geoglyph culture is spanned over 250 kilometres and utilized both
the floodplains and the uplands, with only a fraction of it explored so far.
The structures consisted of trenches,
about 36 feet wide and several feet deep, encircled by banks up to three feet high.
Some structures also had low mounds containing ceramics, charcoal, and stone tools.
Experts believe these structures served various purposes, such as fortifications,
homes, and ceremonial sites. It is estimated that they could have accommodated a population
of up to sixty thousand people, surpassing the population of many medieval European cities.
These findings challenge the notion that the upper
Amazon region had poor soil incapable of supporting large-scale agriculture.
Denise Shawn, an anthropologist at the Federal University of Para in Brazil, explains that the
prevailing belief is incorrect and that much more remains to be discovered in these areas.
The research team continues to uncover new structures on a weekly basis.
Many mounds exhibited a consistent shape slanting towards the north, leading experts to speculate
that they may have served astronomical purposes. Surprisingly, the earthworks
in both floodplains and uplands shared similar styles, suggesting a unified cultural origin.
Traditionally, Amazonian archaeology suggested different peoples inhabiting different ecosystems.
Therefore, it was unusual to find a culture capable of thriving in diverse
ecosystems across such a vast region. The recent revelations are reshaping our
understanding of the Americas prior to Christopher Columbus's arrival.
The discovery in the upper Amazon region parallels earlier findings in the Xingu region to the south,
where a network of interconnected villages known as Garden cities was discovered.
These cities, constructed between 800 and 1600, featured houses, moats, and palisades.
These findings challenge long-standing assumptions about the Amazon as a place
inhabited solely by small, primitive tribes. They also
challenge the notion that the environment limited the rise of early civilizations.
The discoveries in the Amazon basin validate the claims made by Percy Fawcett,
the explorer who inspired Conan Doyle's "The Lost World." Fawcett embarked on an expedition
to search for the city of Z, but his team vanished, leaving behind an unsolved mystery.
For a long time, scientists believed that the dense jungle could only sustain
small roaming tribes. However, it now appears that the conquistadors were
telling the truth when they spoke of cities that glistened in white.
Unfortunately, these explorers inadvertently brought diseases that decimated the native
population, allowing the jungle to reclaim the land and obscure signs of civilization.
It is worth noting that the Amazon rainforest, as we know it today,
did not exist fifteen thousand years ago. The region comprised a mixture of savannas, forests,
and wetlands, gradually transforming into the vast rainforest over time.
Despite these differences, evidence suggests that the ancient peoples of
the Amazon possessed remarkable skills in adapting to their environments.
Excavations of ancient settlements have revealed the utilization of various food sources,
including fish, shellfish, wild game, fruits, nuts, and other plant foods.
Ancient Amazonian cultures likely practiced agriculture
on a small scale in addition to their hunting and gathering activities.
They demonstrated expertise in creating and utilizing tools made of stone,
bone, and wood for various purposes, such as hunting, fishing, woodworking, and fiber arts.
Art and ritual were integral aspects of Amazonian culture. Pottery, textiles,
and other intricate art forms were created by many ancient Amazonian cultures.
They developed complex religious beliefs,
often incorporating ancestor worship and the ceremonial use of hallucinogenic plants.
Archaeologists and anthropologists have reconstructed aspects of daily
life in the Amazon 8,000 years ago. The ancient inhabitants were semi-nomadic,
constantly moving in search of food and resources.
They lived in small, decentralized communities organized around kinship ties,
with each group consisting of a few related families.
Hunting was crucial for their survival, targeting animals like deer, tapirs,
and peccaries using primitive weapons such as spears and bows and arrows.
Fishing in rivers and streams, supplemented by gathering a diverse range of plant foods,
played significant roles in their subsistence.
The incredible biodiversity of the Amazon rainforest characterized life 5,000 years
ago. With an estimated 40,000 plant species and two and a half million insect species,
in addition to numerous birds, mammals, reptiles, and fish,
the environment profoundly influenced the daily lives of ancient Amazonian peoples.
Agriculture also played a vital role in the Amazon 5,000 years ago,
with evidence suggesting the cultivation of crops like corn,
beans, cassava, squash, fruits, and nuts. Hunting and fishing served both subsistence
and cultural purposes, shaping the social and economic dynamics of Amazonian communities.
Social organization varied across cultures,
ranging from extended families or kinship groups sharing resources to the existence
of larger political organizations led by chiefs or other authoritative figures.
Religion held great significance in Amazonian culture, with complex beliefs intertwined
with the natural world. Certain plants or animals were revered in religious ceremonies,
while the existence of supernatural beings or spirits influenced human life.
These findings provide a glimpse into the rich history of the ancient peoples of the Amazon,
challenging previous assumptions and expanding our knowledge of
pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas. What do you guys think? Drop in your comments
below, and don’t forget to subscribe to Lab 3 60, because together, we will explore.